Functional Analysis Of English Idioms

Concentrating on the creativity of language, Chomskyan Linguistics ignores one important aspect of language use, i.e. prefabrication. This study focuses on two of the most important types of prefabricated language, i.e. idioms and its close kin, idiomatic expression,which is often labeled 'idiomatic collocations' or 'strong collocations'. Being the two main realization forms of Sinclair's 'idiom principle', they are covered by the general term 'idiom' in this study. A number of idiom studies pay much attention to structure, rhetoric, origins and relations with culture, but their functions in discourse are the major concern of this thesis. This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction to this thesis. It composes of research tradition of prefabricated language, different definitions of idioms, which are given by different linguists such as Firth, Halliday, Mitchell and Sinclair etc., and the purpose of this thesis, in which a question is asked, i.e. What are the functions of idioms as prefabricated language in discourse?Chapter 2 is a review of the main literature related to the study of idioms. Firth was one of scholar who paid much attention to the use of prefabrication. Mitchell was principally concerned with 'forms of language' and saw idiomatic expression and other collocations reflecting the 'on-going' nature of language. Sinclair extended the notion of collocation into the idiom principle and prophesied that 'the traditional domain of syntax would be invaded by lexical hordes'. Halliday, as a functional grammarian, raise the notion of 'lexis as most delicate grammar'. We categorize functionally idioms into three types: ideational (e.g. Indian summer), interpersonal (e.g. What's up?), and textual (e.g. by and large). The three types of idioms are cooperative in social discourse and organize discourses as harmonious semantic unit. While other linguists such as Makkai, U.Weinreich, Fraser and Strassler gave traditional linguistic studies of English idioms in their respective works.Chapter 3 is concerned with idiom traditional research and its doubts. It is generally admitted that idiom characteristics are composed of semantic opacity, syntactic frozenness and lexical integrity. But usually we do not obey this rule in actual use. As far as semantic opacity is concerned, by and large is much higher than thumbs up. It is admitted by most linguists that kick the bucket cannot be passived in linguistic discourse, while idiom give up the ghost can easily undergo its passive voice counterpart. As for lexical integrity, button in idiom button one's lip can be substituted by fasten , while none of us will say 'yes, I know that by and big is one of the variants of idiom by and large.' This section is the contrastive analysis of those issues.Chapter 4 is the main body of this thesis, in which Halliday's three metafunctions, i.e. ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions of idioms are the major concern. Ideational function refers to the function of representing the world, i.e. through idiom learning we learn to know the world, shape our viewpoint and attitude towards the world. Compared with grammar and single words, ideational idioms are typically specific in the delineation of the world, typically process-oriented and typically evaluative. Interpersonal idioms are the main resources to express conviviality and other social emotions. They realize Halliday's 'meaning as exchange' of language and usually show much higher idiomaticity than ideational ones. Textual idioms are those idiomatic expressions which help to make explicit the semantic unity of discourse. They establish conjunctive connections (Addition, Connection, Condition, Reason and Result, etc.) within or between sentences, as well as between portions of a discourse. The three types of idioms are cooperative in social discourse, but the author believes that ideational idioms always hold the most important position in idiom study, which are mainly realized in quantity and...